An Asian Native Manga Reader and his Failure to get into Comics/Graphic novels! It the cultural differences to be blamed? Or is it the nature of Comics/Graphic novels?

Hello. This is a Korean in America
and I cannot get into U.S. Comics/Graphic novels even though I tried several
times.

Growing up
in Korea, Manga was my native form of childhood entertainment.

City hunter and Dragon Ball are
titles that are dearest to my childhood memories.

We did not
really get U.S. Comics/Graphic novels in Korea. The only titles I remember
seeing around was some G.I. Joe and X-men titles which quickly came and went.
They were experiments in Korean publishing that failed miserably and were never
really attempted again. For us, this was not a big problem since the number of
Manga being legally and illegally imported over from Japan was more than enough
for us.

Once I came
to the American shores, I tried to get into the Comics/Graphic novel medium.
But I never could get into the medium.. The problem is that manga and Comic are
two vastly different mediums with their own characteristics developed over
time. For a new comer, these characteristics functions as a barrier to entry.

Here are
some of those barriers to entry for a native Manga reader like me.

1.Comics are more close to reading a
book

There is a fundamental difference of
storytelling philosophies between the two mediums. In comics, every panel
intended to be viewed with the readers’ attention. Manga, on the other hand, is
more about flow and motion. It is a common view with Manga editorial staffs
that the viewer should not be required to spend more than 30 seconds per page
with a Manga. And I mean per page and not per panel.

2.Comics relies too much on talking
heads and exposition

When I first tried to read a comic,
it was like the writers were frustrated playwrights or novelist. There were
simply too much dialog per page and all of the dialogue seemed very
monologue-y. For a manga reader who has been accustomed to much less dialogue per
book, it is tedious!

3.There was a lack of quality control
in comics.

The art style preferred by
Comics/Graphic novels seems to be overly complex which works well for voguing
poses. This works well for static panels such as cover art but is not well
suited to convey motion. Simply, the drawing style is too complex to be
consistent without some serious effort in quality control.

I joke that the only reason for
Super Heroes have costumes is that, without them, no one would know who the
characters are between panels. This is because many of the panels with motion
were so poorly drawn that it was difficult to notice who was who.

4.The frequent changes of artists in comics.

With Manga, the art style does not
change throughout the life span of the title. Once an art style is fixed, that
is it. So, if the existing artist is no longer available, Mangas are either
discontinued or they find another artist that would carry on the existing art
style.With Comics/Graphic novels, it
almost seems that the art style changes every few months while the story
continues. For a native manga reader, this is extremely disruptive.

Imagine
that a movie suddenly changes all of its art designs and actors halfway through
the movie!

Like all visual mediums, comic and
manga are the partnership between story and visuals. However, with comics, the
visuals seem to be disposable part of the partnership.

5.Comics seems to be very pretentious
and pompous

I always wondered why comics gave
off this perception. Initially, I thought it may because comics, as a medium,
mostly serviced a juvenile audience. However, this is the same with Manga. In
some ways, a lot of manga targeted a more adolescent audience than some of the
more mature comics.After some deep thoughts, I came up
with a different conclusion. The reasons why comics can feel pretentious lie
with the presentation of the story rather than the story itself. First, because of the nature of the medium, a
complex story is crammed into very few pages. With manga, a story line can
cover more than a thousand pages. For example, a sports series, Slam Dunk, spent
about 5 books to cover a single basketball match. That is more than a thousand
pages.Second, because of the overreliance
of monologue and exposition to present the story, the message of the story
feels preachy. Third, the lone gunman nature of the superhero genre creates a
mismatch in scope between the actual plot and the message of the story.These cause the story to feel
pretentious and pompous.

6.Finally, I hate that the cover art of
many comics are false advertisement

The cover art is like a movie
poster. If the poster has Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine in the movie, the
movie should have Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine and not some C-class television
actor.

If you have a character drawn in a
certain style and design on the cover, the cover should represent what the
character looks like in the comic book. However, this is not the case in many situations.
We get the inferior quality in the book.

It is a classic bait and switch.

Simply put,
the difference between the manga and Comic mediums was too vast for someone like
me whose tastes evolved with manga. For a native manga reader, comics/Graphic
novels is simply too eccentric to be palatable. This is not unpredictable. The cultural soil that
neutered one’s taste has a lasting effect.

What is interesting is that the opposite
may not be true.

With the growth
of manga in the U.S. and the failures of Comics to expand beyond the North American
shores, one has to ask the question of whether comics/graphic novels are, by
nature, difficult to palate and thus require early indoctrination and education
to be enjoyable.

What are
your thoughts?

Is there
are comics/graphic novels that could possibly be a gateway drug for a native
Manga reader?